Downton Abbey or is it Downright Shabby Hits The Big Screen: © Worditch News – Film Review By Julian Race

Just when you thought it was safe to come out of that dark yet cozy closet, the fifth TV re-run of the six series had finally finished on ITV3 and your sanity had been restored to “almost normal”, that flippin Julian Fellows comes up with the film version of Downright Shabby.

Being headline news and pasted all over the front pages of Worditch News, I braced myself for the question I knew would inevitably roll off my wife’s tongue. “Can we go and see Downton at the flicks”? Shit, I did not think it would be that quick but fortunately, I still had a few tabs of valium left that saw me through the screening of the full series on TV. For reasons that now escape me, I found my head nodding rather than shaking which is something I must add to the ever growing list of ailments that I needed to inform my doctor about when he had fully recovered from my previous visit! It’s possibly the onset of St Vitus Dance I thought, knowing my current health conditions; however, I’d done it, I’d agreed to go and see Downright Shabby.

Following the agreement, which was quickly set in fast drying concrete, I tried on several occasions to call my psychiatrist, but he had possibly suffered the same fate as I had and was currently residing on another planet!

The following day arrived so quickly and being sufficiently medicinally subdued, we entered screen 8 of the cinema and took our pre booked seats. All in the name of consumer interest I repeated to myself over and over.

Once all the long-term calorie abusing consumers had settled down with their family bucket of popcorn in one fist, their foot-long sausage roll in another, or at least that’s what I hoped it was and every pocket bulging with potato crisps and sweets including a two litre cardboard jug of “diet” coke hooked between their teeth, the introductory music bellowed out of the Dolby system!

The film begins with a letter being signed and then sealed down by some royal equerry or other who then hands it to a servant who then runs it down to the post office where it is shoved uncerimoniously into a sack and loaded onto the night train.

As the train thunders through the night, the post is eagerly sorted by the ever so humble postal staff and the letter makes another appearance as it is put into a pigeon hole. I wondered if it had an equity card.

The scene changes to a Post Office van trundling through traffic free streets with not an E Scooter in sight!

The scene then cuts a postman on a motorcycle heading up the long and winding driveway to Downright Shabby, it could be a BSA but I’ll stand corrected. The motorbike squeaks to a halt and the letter which appears at this point to be the star of the film is handed to Daisy’s dopey love interest Andrew who then rushes it to Barrow who just happened to be waiting for the postal delivery near the tradesman’s entrance, which given Barrows disposition is somewhere he always longs to be.

Barrow or Wheelie as I’ve nicknamed him, hands the letter to Hugh Bunny boiler or Robert Bawdy as he is named in the film who surprisingly looks twenty years younger than when he was in series six and Barrow tells him that it is a letter “from the palace”.

Unimpressed, Bob walks off with it muttering, “So it is”. Barrow who is sporting a new haircut with a tinge of grey at the sides looks bemused and returns to attend to his other duties, no doubt as amazed as I was that it only cost 1d for a red stamp to send the envelope all that way and with so many people handling it! It was at this point that I mentally noted that the gender realignment injections Barrow had taken in series six must have worked a treat as he never tried to chat up the postman!

And so, it came to pass that the royal letter revealed that the King and Queen were to visit Downright on a tour. Was Freddie Mercury to make an appearance I mused; Barrow will be pleased! The story drags on and like Bob did in series six, switches to below stairs for a change of scenery.

Now, bearing in mind the royal couple were a month away from the visit, Mrs. Fatmore, Daisy and the other kitchen staff who never utter a word, were running around with a few headless chickens or was it like headless chickens, never mind, they were eagerly preparing food like the royals were already in residence!

Plans were immediately put in place in preparation for the King and Queens visit to Downright. Unfortunately, the staff below stairs was to have their noses pushed out of joint as the royal duo always took their own staff wherever they went so were subsequently banned from serving the royal visitors.

Surprisingly, yet reassuringly caustic Cora “the borer - yawn” has very few lines in this film but decides at a family meeting to discuss the visit that Wheelie (Barrow) is incontinent, she may have said incompetent, but the ever-expanding person sat directly behind me opened another family size bag of cheese and vinegar potato crisps just as Cora spoke. I quickly ran the scene back through my mind to get back on track and decided that Barrow is either A) going to France, B) requires a few wine corks from Parsoles (Carson’s) stash to stem the flow or 3) is not up to the job! (Did you see what I did there?)

Whichever it was, the scene changes to Mrs. Shoes (Hughes) walking down the long driveway of Downright and into her garden where she catches Parsoles in the garden scraping his prize carrot or that’s what he said he was doing! Following a short discussion and after wiping his hands and his carrot on his pinnie, he launches himself fully costumed in his butlers outfit up to Downright to save the day.

The film reveals that Lady Edith is suddenly married to a right Herbert and funnily enough that’s his name in the film and is wealthier now than any of the Bawdy family put together which is another thorn in the side of Lady Mary.

Apparently, somewhere along the TV series he must have accepted Marigold the “bastard child” as the Bawdy family referred to it as.

The Dowager Violet reveals at the age of 192 she has had the results of tests and they are not good; she cannot go to university after all and even if she did, she’d never pay off the student loan or complete the course as she is ill and will pass away shortly. Did I see Robert check his watch in the background?

The royal servants arrive and imediately take over the running of the house, much to the disdain of the downstairs Downright staff.

Suddenly, and totally out of the blue, the central heating broke down and because Parsoles had cancelled the service contract with British Gas to save money, a local plumber was called in to sort it out.

With his ball cock in his hand the plumber tries his best chat up lines on Daisy which just goes to prove that men can multi task after all! The dope that Daisy is pondering on marrying gets jealous of the plumber and in his rage smashes the central heating system after the plumber leaves the house so that everyone would think the plumber was about as much use as a 12mm washer in a 13mm joint. But people were wiser than he thought and because of it Daisy promises to marry him? (Work that one out!)

The day of the royal visit arrives, caustic Cora warns Bob that he had better not do his duodenal ulcer party trick on the King or he’s banned from the marital bed and back into the spare room.

The next scene cuts to Molsley who is acting as if he badly needs a wee. Obviously overwhelmed at serving royalty, Molsley proceeds to wet himself and as if on cue caustic Cora is not amused and gives him one of her stern looks which causes his reserve tank to empty also.

The devious Downright staff downstairs decide to drug the royal chef with a double dose of sleeping draft and the royal butler is then locked in his bedroom. The result of which sees the Downright staff serving the King and Queen. With Molsley sporting a well placed washing peg to prevent spillage, all goes well.

That is except for Barrow who agrees to go out with one of the male staff that is supposed to be looking after the royals. They agree to meet at a pub later that evening.

Barrow bowls up to the pub, but his male companion is nowhere to be seen. So, being a budding promiscuous type, he is quickly chatted up by another bloke who asks him to go with him to a club.

Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather boa when they go in to this gay club where men dance with other men for Christ’s sake and when Barrow kisses this bloke full on the mouth and I suspect there were tongues involved, the woman behind me nearly choked on her fifth bag of salted nuts and proceeded to fire a machine gun of salted nuts into my right ear!

Barrow was really getting into the scene and I presume he was aroused and was about to do his “Jake the Peg” impression when in storms the local plod or police to give the finer translation and all the “Perverts” as the police called them were arrested and carted off to clink and not one of them collected £200 for passing “Go”!

The bloke who originally supposed to have met Barrow at the pub turns up at the nick and gets Barrow out without a charge and Barrow gets his first real boyfriend “to write to”! Ahhhh.

Lady Mary, who has only smiled once in the whole six series on TV as far as my memory serves me remains fairly quiet throughout and decides to marry Henry Talbot. Henry, who sports a rather long spoon neck in my opinion is yet another racing driver. However, following some one to one training with Branson in series one, she was fully up to speed with which brake pipe to cut if Henry as much as looks at her incorrectly.

But Branson, what about Branson shouts the person behind me whilst simultaneously showering my head with a mixture of popcorn, diet coke and the half sucked corner of a snickers bar. My wife hands me a tissue without averting her eyes from the screen and as if by magic, Branson appears.

An IRA member is furtively chatting to Branson who immediately gets drawn into a plot to kill the King. Branson, being the full shilling in the brains department sees through the ruse and saves the King from being shot. Branson however had secretly wanted to kill the King himself but had to ditch the idea when two undercover policemen arrested the IRA member.

After all that action we finally come to the finale, Barrow got his beau without the need to feel the full force of a coppers truncheon, Lady Mary agrees to marry Henry and buys some new metal snippers, Dowager Violet is definitely a goner but will miraculously reappear in fine health in the new series and Bob is counting her wealth, Bates still has his limp but has a classic collection of walking sticks under his belt if that is possible, Parsoles retires again to grow cucumbers, Mrs. Shoes refuses to eat his carrots, Daisy is engaged, the plumber is out on his ear, Lady Edith is thinking of modelling lingerie, Herbert is still a right Herbert, Mrs. Patmore invents a new recipe, Cora is promised that she can have more lines to speak in the next series along with several new facial expressions, the postman manages to kick start the BSA and the letter is screwed up and thrown in the trash, never to act again!

The credits roll………….

Go and see the film and tell me this review isn’t spot on!

©Julian Race 16/6/2021

Twitter @JulianRace1

When I first saw “The Danish Girl” in 2015, as I suspected, it did not disappoint in the least. Its portrayal of the first transgender reassignment surgery in the year of 1930 of Einer Wegener, who became Lili Elbe after the surgery, and was also a famous Danish painter, was both moving and beautiful. This was one of the best and memorable movies I’ve ever seen and lives up to the ranks of “The Reader”, “Schlinder’s List”, and “Atonement” to name a few. It’s storyline had the same type of profound impact on me that those aforementioned movies did, and I cannot begin to say enough about Eddie Redmayne’s character portrayal of Lili Elbe. As always, he is an absolutely phenomenal character actor, and in this particular instance, he outdid himself. It was no small wonder that he did win the Oscar for his portrayal of the main character. Its Director, Tom Hooper, sensitively and wonderfully handled a difficult subject matter while envoking the most moving performances from each of his actors. No matter what your opinion is or your stand on transgender individuals and sex reassignment surgery may be, this movie speaks volumes to us on a much greater plane about so much more, including love, tolerance, and acceptance. However, the movie does give us an informative view on the aforementioned subject matters as well, providing valuable and eye opening informaton. “The Danish Girl” makes an enormous impact and statement about the profundity of enduring and unconditional love, as well as perseverance and courage in the face of adversity. Not only does it make an impact in these ways, its cast, direction, screenplay, costume design, and cinematography make it collectively one of the best of its time. If you see “The Danish Girl”, I don’t think you will be sorry.

The brand new film “Cruella” (2021) was two hours and fourteen minutes of my life that I savored like a square of chocolate on my tongue. Everything, from its jaw-dropping costume design to its badass soundtrack, kept me on the edge of my seat (and this was a comfy cinema seat, mind you!). The stunning Emma Stone played the part of Disney’s notorious villian, Cruella de Vil, with perfection and flair. Also, might I add, her makeup (especially the contouring of her nose) was incredibly impressive.

My favourite part of all of the film’s wonderful features was most definitely the fashion. I left the cinema this afternoon with the burning desire to sell my entire wardrobe for the sole purpose of having the money to dress like Cruella. Of course, I then realized how impractical it would be to simply rid myself of all “ordinary” clothing. So, I will simply thrift around until I can hopefully piece together an outfit half as ravishing as hers.

Another wonderful aspect of “Cruella” is REPRESENTATION! Diversity of race, gender, sexuality, general style, and more can be noted throughout the entire movie. We appreciate inclusive efforts!

All in all, please go see this film. I do not want to even scratch the surface of the plotline for fear of giving away too much, so you must find out for yourselves! Enjoy, and please let me know your thoughts/feelings in the comments.

XXX,

coldfront

*ADVISORY* explicit content *ADVISORY*

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Everybody up in this bitch needs to watch Cube (1997).

Fucking everybody needs to see Cube.

HUMANS LIKE SQUARES. Cube

Ugh, fine. logistics. The room is a cube. There’s six doors that could connect this cube to

another cube! ...

In this connected system of cubes, there are a group of people who find each other and have to figure out a way to escape the god damn cube, or e l s e.

Or else death, by a number of voluntary and involuntary methods, namely the traps rigged in the rooms, starvation, dehydration, infection, suffocation, sewer slide, etc. etc.

Awakening in a mysterious cube room with no personal belongings, no memory of how they got there, and rare bits and pieces of their past and identity, a group of strangers find themselves in a maze, or a puzzle, or some shit, and discover that they need each other’s help to figure out the maze’s exit. As people meet their true selves and are faced with wonderful obstacles and clues, they meet their untimely demise one by one in their attempts to escape the place that has no business existing at all.

If you don’t like blood, you won’t like it :/ If you don’t like violence, aggressiveness, big brain moments, mystery plots, numbers (heavy on the numbers), idiots in groups, jumper suits, or if you’re so empathetic you can feel claustrophobic from seeing a closed space on a flat screen, then watch this with an adult :/ As they make their way around the puzzle cube, they learn from their mistakes and learn some distasteful things about each other. Whether the cube or a friend kills them first, I’ll never tell >:[ (I can be convinced)

Cube is a psychological thriller, it’s definitely at least half a mystery, and the whole thing is suspenseful from start to finish. The other movies in the franchise are also worth the time, especially the prequel to this one. The visual storytelling is pretty impressive, considering the setting for the room has to remain largely unchanged, and the characters are designed in a way that makes sense for something of a oneshot. Every installment in the series follows a different set of characters, new batches to the Cube, and the updates given to the cube are pretty sharp. For the worst movie being the latest one, the mystery of the cube, how it works, and how it was created is a fun idea. I rewatch this movie every now and then because there’s something repeatable about the way this mystery unfolds. Usually when the magician reveals the secret, the trick is null from that point, but watching this story develop from a simple cube doesn’t get old for me.

It’s hard to talk about a mystery without spoiling it really, so this is the warning.

The first death in the movie happens a short time after we discover that one of these old hoots is an infamous escape criminal, well known enough that a random other stranger-who-may-or-may-not-have-a-thing-with-the-law recognizes them by name. For a veteran of this type of gameplay to be the first to fall victim to it really sets the tone for the rest of the movie. Picking up his tricks up to that point with the boot scouts, the button trick, and the general idea to keep moving, the rest of the group forms a pretty good algorithm for picking safe rooms.

Until it doesn’t work anymore, someone gets unalived or injured, they revise the plan, reflect on the errors, and repeat until the terror of being trapped and doomed forever leads to some conflict in the group. Having the main macho guy be the typical aggressive and selfish type is pretty lukewarm for the genre, a classic trope that could use a good update, but his the scene where he let’s go of the makeshift rope just on a whim, and his comeback right at the finishing scene really redeems his role there (functionally, I mean. He’s still a bitch). I just don’t appreciate that he had to be a convict (he could’ve been a politician or a suit or something nastier)

The plot twist for me when I first watched it was the reveal of the prime numbers and the human calculator. I hate the trope because it relies on a stereotype around disabled people, but the moment he came in clutch with the speedy numbers really seemed to turn the tides (I watched it when I was 11, hear me). I realize that there’s probably some metaphor about being nice, taking care of others, and it’ll benefit you or something, but his whole role really was just being babysat until you asked him for prime factorizations. In this movie, it falls short, but after finishing the series, I appreciate this character more.

The main girl shoulders a big chunk of the forward progression because ~numbers~ but her sense of reading the room and keeping tabs on people and their state is notable too. I would argue that she was really leading the group rather than the big guy who was quick to give people orders.

The doctor lady was an interesting character addition, and I didn't really sense her purpose in the film until the drop towards the end. Functionally, she did her job, but I wasn't really expecting fully fleshed out characters for this genre and set up anyway. Still, her and the Wren played complimentary roles and were some pretty good bookends for where the journey part of the mystery starts and ends. After her drop, there's very little mystery left to uncover, but it becomes a race at that point. After some more escalating, the climax of the whole story comes pretty quickly, and the end leaves a good checkpoint for the story line.

The mystery of the cube continues after Cube, but it's pretty solid by itself. Did it leave me wanting more? yes because... because cubes

But was it like leaving off on a cliff hanger and rushing to the internet to sate it? no.

You get closure, but it's pretty clear there was room for expansion. It's one of those movies that burns steadily, so pay attention, but you don't really miss anything by going on your phone until the halfway mark, really.

So again, watch Cube.

Humans like squares.

It is one of those movies that almost made me cry, though most movies I watch recently almost made me cry too.

The movie begins with the story of Tim Templeton, who grew up to become the husband of Carol and father of Tabitha and Tina. He also tells of what happened with the other characters of the previous movie, where his baby brother Ted became a CEO who is never there but always sends "inappropriately lavish gifts" to Tim's family.

The movie kicked off when Tina was discovered to be from Baby Corp. and was on a secret mission to find out what the principal of Tabitha's school, Dr. Erwin Armstrong is up to. Tina, Tim, and Ted then set out to complete the mission, finding out that Dr. Armstrong was acutally a baby planning to get rid of all parents.

During the mission, Tim and Ted had some disputes, revealing that Tim didn't attend Ted's two graduations while Ted didn't attend Tim's one wedding. They eventually reconciled in the "Game Over Room", where they were almost killed if it weren't for Tabitha's pet horse Precious.

After Tabitha was disappointed that her father wasn't there to see her sing in the Holiday Pageant, she was comforted by Tina, who revealed her identity and the fact that their father and uncle were there all the time. Tim, Ted, Tina, and Tabitha then set out to complete the mission by destroying Dr. Armstrong's server, bringing back the parents turned by Dr. Armstrong into mindless zombies by the QT-Snap App, Dr. Armstrong's creation.

The movie ends with the whole Templeton family celebrating Christmas together, with Ted sending a giant statue of Tim, among other "inappropriately lavish gifts," while Dr. Armstrong reconciling with his parents that he walked out of.

What I liked about the movie is the many jokes heard throughout, the relationships between the characters, and the fascinating story, and the messages the movie brought up. Those are the reasons I put this review here, let alone me recommending this movie.

Finally, it is in this movie where Ted quoted Tina, "Just because you grow up, doesn't mean you have to grow apart."

Alcotts “Little Women” is a coming-of-age story following 4 sisters on their journey through ‘womanhood’. Sixteen-year-old Meg, known for her beauty and traditional femininity, fifteen-year-old Jo, known for her rebellious ideology and “tomboy” lifestyle, thirteen-year-old Beth, recognized for her musical ability and kindness, and finally the youngest of the sisters, twelve-year-old Amy, known as the stereotypical stubborn little sister whose greatness she felt had been lost in the shadows of her older sisters, reside in a small home in Massachusetts during the 1860’s with their struggling but loving mother while their father is away at war. Between Beth becoming ill with scarlet fever, Meg’s search for a purpose, and the constant competition between Jo and Amy which is only made worse when fifteen-year-old Laurie comes to live with his grandfather, creating a love triangle between the 3 that seems to only exist in Amy’s mind due to the budding, yet one sided romance between Laurie and her older sister, Jo. The girl’s upbringing represents how different women want different things in life, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It also shows the societal pressure on young women in both the 1800’s along with present day society and how it impacts the lives of impressionable girls, struggling to find a purpose in life. In summary, this story explores feminism, loss, individuality, sickness, money struggles, and the ever so unfair pressure from the world to be a man’s “little woman”. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for an inspiring and comedic story. I think it’s exceptionally important for this book to reach young women because it shows the difficult time between childhood and adulthood for girls, and how there are unlimited paths to live your life and end up where you’re supposed to be; wherever you want to be.